Traffic in Souls (1913)

Early exploitation film

After a brief hiatus, I'm back with a classic from 1913, Traffic in Souls.  The film was directed by George Loane Tucker and was one of the most expensive, but successful films of its time.

The lives of two sisters and their invalid father are shattered when one of the sisters goes missing.  The family fears for her safety as they are very aware that woman are being abducted and forced into slavery.  Can the police and the family find the woman in the bustling metropolis of New York?

This was one of the first feature films to focus on delivering a social message to the masses.  The movie feeds into a very real fear amongst women at the time: that they would be abducted and forced into prostitution. The film depicts in detail how the white slave trade works, following recent immigrants off of boats and trains and tricking them into their own capture.  Some of the methods used by the slavers seem lees than authentic, but that's to be forgiven in a 74 minute film. 

The movie also was one of the first exploitation films.  The advertising explicitly sold the sexual aspects of the movie (which seem downright quaint now) and the movie features misogynistic slavers, including one prepared to whip one of the slaves into submission.  Depictions of the white slave trade would later be banned under the Hays Code in the 1930s.

Technically, there is not a lot of innovative camera work here.  The camera basically remains in the same position for each scene.  There is an amazing shot of the head of the slavery ring descending the steps of the jail from an overhead angle and a well done pan across multiple jail cells.  Where the movie shines is in the editing. There are a lot of quick cuts between scenes and character and, despite the multiple plotlines, you never get lost.  The acting is solid, but never showy which lends the film an almost documentary feel.

On the whole, I really enjoyed this movie.  The first half showing the slave trade mechanics was much more interesting than the latter half.  The ultimate plot resolution involves a big coincidence and shows the local police methods in sometime monotonous detail ("let's show the viewer that every exit of the building is covered").  However, the film is briskly edited (a rarity in this time period) in a method rivaling D.W. Griffith and the plot structure following multiple characters reminded me of more recent films like Traffic and Crash.  Compared to most of the other movies I have watched, Traffic in Souls seems ahead of its time.

Watched on DVD from Netflix